History of Ibizaby Emily Kaufman The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)An Overview: XVIII

Hello and welcome to the history page. Our instalment this week opens
with the narrow triumph of Azaña’s reformist administration over the
previous conservative regime. The five months that elapsed between the
leftist electoral victory in February 1936 and the outbreak of civil war
in July 1936 were fraught with political treachery and social unrest.
Indeed, with the aid of hindsight we can see that the acrimony of this
period was nothing if not the prelude to war. Two opposing currents of
thought and action - one conservative and reactionary, the other
progressive and liberal - brewed menacingly over the Spanish horizon.
The angry voices of parliamentary discussion can be likened to the
rumbling of thunder, while the escalating acts of public violence were
the bolts of lightening that in turn set off new rebounds of thunder. It
was only a matter of time before the storm would unleash its deluge of
hatred and death over the face of Spain. Let us now examine the course
taken by each of the country’s opposing camps during these final
tortured months.

The Popular Front

Azana’s government, launched as the Popular Front (a coalition of
republicans, socialists, Catalan leftists, communists and Basque
nationalists - listed in order of the number of seats held by each
faction), reunited after the internal divisions of 1933 under a
programme of amnesty for the October revolutionaries. Their first
objective was to free the thousands of incarcerated workers, make
reparations to the victims, and ensure that leftist sympathizers were
restored to their jobs, many having been blacklisted after the uprising.
Second on their agenda was the renewal of the legislation that had been
instituted during the Reformist Biennium, especially the laws regarding
education, agriculture and federal autonomy.

A
third course of action was the demotion of suspicious rightist generals
who, during the Black Biennium, had risen vertiginously to positions of
power within the government. Accordingly, generals Franco, Mola and
Goded, the prime movers of the imminent military coup, were transferred
to Tenerife, Pamplona and Majorca respectively. Their removal from
Madrid and the hub of political life was certainly wise, but, as we
shall see, insufficient to stop the clandestine networking that was
already in progress among the three generals and a host of
anti-republican supporters. Posterior analyses of the causes of war
invariably point out the myopia of the Popular Front in estimating the
real threat presented by these generals to the continuance of
democracy.

The National Front

The
opposition launched their electoral platform under the hastily
patch-worked National Front, an ad hoc coalition of the Spanish right
wing (i.e. CEDA, monarchists, landowners, etc.), with the
exception of the Falangist Party, which remained unaffiliated due to the
fact that there were not enough parliamentary seats to go around.
Campaigning under a separate platform, the Falangists suffered a
terrible defeat at the urns and, in the end, won no seats in parliament.
José Antonio then opted for what he termed ‘the dialectic of fists
and pistols’, in other words, street violence.

One
point that stands to be clarified regarding the 1936 elections is that
the results were extremely close, the margin of difference being no more
than 200,000 votes in favour of the Popular Front. Thus, despite the
fact that Azaña’s cabinet ruled parliament, public sentiment was quite
evenly divided between left and right, a scenario that further served to
fuel the wheels of war.

Public Disorder on Both Sides of the Fence

As
regards the political line of the National Front, its opposition to
Azaña’s reforms was as adamant as ever. To this habitual resistance they
now added the tactic of subversion: certain agents (José Antonio’s ‘blue
shirts’, for example) provoked public disorder while the rest of the
right wing exaggerated and sensationalized these incidents in an attempt
to discredit the government and so justify the planned repression. The
fatal flaw of the left wing was its impetuous reaction to these taunts
and its impatience in effecting social change.

One
example of this impatience occurred in the rural hinterland of
Extremadura where, as in the rest of Spain, the issue of land rights was
a major source of contention. On learning of the leftist victory, the
ploughmen of Extremadura reoccupied the lands that, under the Reformist
Biennium, had been granted them. The only problem was that, in their
haste, they did not wait for the official ratification of the laws that
would soon legitimize this occupation. Predictably, the affected
landowners retaliated by calling in the guardia civil, giving
rise to numerous bloody clashes and the loss of life on both sides.

The
urban panorama was also afflicted by frequent strikes and bombings as
well as the stalking militias of blue-shirts. In effect, the social
climate was virtually identical to the period preceding Primo de
Rivera’s seizure of power, the only difference being that Primo de
Rivera’s takeover was non-violent, while Franco’s takeover, intended to
be a quick coup, degenerated into three years of warfare.

Spanish Civil War Poster

Final Stand

In
the face of growing chaos and turmoil, the new government did its best
to carry on. One particular debate held on 1st July remains
as the final parliamentary showdown between right and left. The Minister
of Agriculture presented a bill advocating the return of communal
properties to certain towns whose commons had been expropriated during
the previous century. His proposal was hotly challenged by the
monarchist, Calvo Sotelo, who, since Gil Robles’ fall from grace was now
hailed as the national leader of the right wing:

“…
the liberal-democratic State cannot interfere in this type of problem,”
he argued, maintaining that what Spain needed was an authoritarian
government to protect the interests of “the middle classes, who are
not willing to be proletarianized the way that the inhabitants ofRussia are.”

To this, the Minister of Agriculture responded:

“Any protectionism by the State is based on the concept that there have
been social classes who, due to their economic situation, have not had
the means to defend themselves and we must lend them these means. We are
not aiming for a Marxist economy, we are not aiming for a Marxist
regime; we are aiming, simply, for a situation of justice that so far
has not come about. Whose fault is that?”

On
13th July, less than two weeks after this impassioned
exchange, Lieutenant Castillo, an ardent and vocal socialist, was
assassinated by rightwing activists. That very night, a group of
Castillo’s colleagues avenged his death by killing Calvo Sotelo. The
killing of such an exalted personage was indeed a grave transgression,
but graver still was the fact that, unbeknownst to the public, Calvo
Sotelo had recently pledged his allegiance to Franco’s conspiracy. It is
often said that his death was the spark that started the war when, in
fact, his death merely precipitated the execution of a military coup
already in the final stages of planning.

Closing

Join
us next week for the final instalment of our overview when we will
retrace the steps of Franco and his generals in the preparation of their
conspiracy. Following that, our area of scrutiny will shift back to
Ibiza and the specific effects of the civil war on the island. Until
then.